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Roadsters and Fires
- Thread starter spiderguy
- Start date
You speculate, below, Pete speculated, in the beginning, said it was the panel and now that's the gospel? What training does he have to make this claim? The way you say this it seems like no one here should have another opinion?
If you really have 40 years in the industry where are your comments about the lack of safety gear in his shop? How about the lack of fire suppression which he told everyone in 2017 that this building had or was going to have? How about the last fire? How about OSHA violations?
That's what breakers do protect from shorts or circuit overloads. I spoke to my local fire marshall and learned rarely has a fire started in the panel. I have also been called by more than one investigator about this and I invited them to come here and see what we do and how. People who have nothing to hide, hide nothing.
He had a camera system where is the footage?
It's funny to me how you make this thread appear to be a Medlock vs Gruber battle, for it is unequivocally not. The Medlock - Gruber conversation is ancillary; simply a natural byproduct resulting from obvious differences in fire safety measures. My original post was comprised entirely of relevant factual information, sprinkled with personal observations.
The "crucifixion" that you reference isn't based on future findings; it's based on current and existing knowledge.
It is a fact that:
1) Gruber Motors experienced a fire in 2017 that resulted in the destruction of 6 Roadsters (along with several other vehicles)
2) After the 2017 fire, Pete avowed to update his facility to include a fire suppression system, separate/protected bunkers, etc
3) This month, Gruber Motors was befallen by yet another fire, this one far more substantial, that included the total loss of 30 Roadsters
4) The rebuilt facility lacked the safety measures necessary to avoid the calamity that just occurred
We don't need any speculation or hyperbole to reasonably conclude that severe issues existed to enable this heartbreaking event.
It isn't just about whatever ignition source triggered the fire... The conditions for the fire to spread are important to consider as well. Having these rare cars surrounded by loose sheets seems really ill advised.
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They cannot use this fire to value or devalue the cars, they are worth what they are worth. All regardless of the first fire and this is the second round of reckless actions at Gruber's place. Roadsters are valued on many factors, a shop fire will never be one of them.
I can and will say as a shop owner that his reckless actions in 2017 made my insurance premiums go from $4500 a year to over $52,000. I have had zero claims since 1986 when I started in the business. But yet there was an EV shop fire in Phoenix and now they say we are all high risk. No matter how you want to see this, Gruber burning up 36 cars has put an enormous amount of bad light on EV's in general and specifically the Roadster. If he is allowed to spin this and blame the cars, lithium batteries or make the claims EV's are all barn burners then no one will be able to work on EV's in a repair shop.
Ironically some of them see the same things in Pete's past videos I did. Lack of safety equipment, lack of HV anything, and plenty of arrogance.
Yep, all it takes is watching some of the Weber State University videos and how they deal with HV to know that Gruber wasn't following any industry standards for performing HV work.
I think this was a picture of Roadster #666's ESS ( I think under a lift with the Roadster above it ) as seen in Gjeeb's video:
Only some of the sheets were marked as being from #666. Where did the other sheets come from?
I guess the "party line" on that is "from some salvaged Roadsters". But they usually mark where the sheets came from.
Maybe the unmarked ones were good original #666 sheets, and the marked ones were ones they removed, repaired, and replaced again?
The narration talked about "isolating bad cells", so I guess the repair procedure involved taking any malfunctioning cells out of the circuit without actually disassembling the sheet.
Maybe this whole practice is sort of "underground industry standard" but it seems each shop has come up with their own process as I don't think there is any public training guides on how to do this sort of stuff. Medlock was factory trained, Gruber not, so I would trust Medlock's knowledge on "best practices" more.
By the way, what does "BR# 1&2&3" mean to anyone on that sheet above?
( "Bricks (within the sheet) #1, #2, and #3 all have had bad cells isolated?" )
Only some of the sheets were marked as being from #666. Where did the other sheets come from?
I guess the "party line" on that is "from some salvaged Roadsters". But they usually mark where the sheets came from.
Maybe the unmarked ones were good original #666 sheets, and the marked ones were ones they removed, repaired, and replaced again?
The narration talked about "isolating bad cells", so I guess the repair procedure involved taking any malfunctioning cells out of the circuit without actually disassembling the sheet.
Maybe this whole practice is sort of "underground industry standard" but it seems each shop has come up with their own process as I don't think there is any public training guides on how to do this sort of stuff. Medlock was factory trained, Gruber not, so I would trust Medlock's knowledge on "best practices" more.
By the way, what does "BR# 1&2&3" mean to anyone on that sheet above?
( "Bricks (within the sheet) #1, #2, and #3 all have had bad cells isolated?" )
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We don't have to mark sheets with vins here.. Why? Because they stay with the car they belong to.
Question I now have with this many battery packs destroyed, where or how are these disposed of? You can't put them in a land fill. Are there special sites that take this type of battery? What is the EV world going to do when in a few short years they maybe thousands of batteries that need to be disposed? GM is facing this problem with their Volt batteries right now, I think.
There are plenty of companies that recycle batteries. For example Redwood Materials. I don't know that they take burned up packs, or that there is really anything much of value, or hazardous, left after they are burned up.
Yes, that is the Redwood Materials that MP3Mike mentioned.
I know they recycle a lot of gigafactory scrap (there is a lot of material wastage in the production process), as well as lots of spent cells from other sources like cellphone and laptop batteries. I do not know if they are interested in "burnt scrap." Then there is the question of "who owns it?" Once the insurance companies pay off the respective owners they may each own some "Roadster remnants" that they can/should/need to dispose of somehow. So anyone who ends up owning a pile of "roadster scrap" could call up Redwood Materials and ask them if they are interested in having it. Then there is the question if they would come and get it, or if someone would have to deliver it to them...
spaceballs
Member
Agreed, to me Weber HV videos are the gold standard in dealing with HV EV batteries.
spaceballs
Member
Yep anyone with common sense uses 2x4's to prevent the sheets from falling backwards. sad I don't them in use in the videos.
Wow, thank you both for the pro tip on checking out the WSU videos! Definitely going to educate myself more by watching a few of them. For example...
"There is no such thing as a Level 3 EV charger"
...so we all need to immediately stop referring to DCFC EVSEs as "L3" since that's an obsolete term from the '90s SAE J1772 spec docs according to Prof. Kelly.
Here is a PEM sent to us by Grubers about a year ago. Notice the orange board. This pem was rebuilt by us using all good parts and installed in 1165 one of my cars and driven 200 miles. It was sent back to Pete to install, they installed it and claimed it did not function. How can that be I personally drove it 200 miles. (our standard test drive for pems) I asked for it to come back to us, but when it got here it had been dropped and the PEM case was bent like a banana, destroying it. After not taking care of the client I paid to ship 1056 to us to make sure this man got his car back. Since 1056 arrived, we installed a new PEM and then discovered the car had 43 miles of range. I contacted the owner to ask what his range was and he said over 200 miles. A log pull and analysis showed the range dropped by the above amount. We started to pull the pack and found there were 2 sheets that the serial numbers that were not in order. Meaning the two sheets had a completely different set of serial numbers differing from the others in the pack. I contacted the owner and learned the pack had never been out of the car previously. I also made a video showing the bent-up pem and the missing parts. We suspected there might be some parts harvesting going on at the other shop, so before we sent it back the first time, we had marked every part in the PEM, when it came back 100% of our good parts were missing (the PEM case had the serial number on it that we sent there). PEM case was the same, however, none of the internal parts were the same. I have two cars here from there and both have missing OEM parts. I am not picking on grubers I have kept most of this quiet for a long long time.
Whoa, those are some serious allegations! Let me see if I understand this correctly as there appear to be 2 separate issues:
1) The PEM that you rebuilt was sent to Gruber for installation into a customer car. Upon receipt of the PEM, Gruber claimed that the PEM didn't function and ultimately sent it back to you. You received the PEM back from Gruber and discovered that the PEM was significantly damaged. In addition, you were able to ascertain that several good parts that you previously installed were now missing.
2) On the same customer car, the range had an anemic range of only 43 miles upon delivery to your shop. When you notified the customer, you were informed that the car had a range of over 200 miles when it went in to Gruber's for service. Upon inspection of the battery, you discovered that there were 2 problematic battery sheets and both had different serial numbers than the rest of the pack. It's quite drastic for a battery range to plummet from over 200 to just 43 miles while it's in for service. It's not too far of a leap to conclude that 2 working sheets had been swapped out for deficient sheets.
That sounds highly suspect to me. Would love to get some explanations about this.
The second video where the PEM came back destroyed is worse and equally frustrating. You see, there was and is no damage to the crate meaning the PEM was damaged before it went into the crate and Pete Refused to accept responsibility or refund the owner or us. However, I kept my word and fixed this man's PEM at no charge which cost me an entire PEM. What is good for the Roadster community is good for us. If I wanted to release all we have it would be far worse than this. I will post the second video to my youtube channel and see where it takes the investigators who have shown interest. DO I know exactly what happened, no. But I do know what parts went into the PEM and what it came back with? Yes 100%
Actually, I have two more videos about PEMS that came from there. The other came from Texas where the owner paid $12,000 for repairs, they were charged for work that didn't happen and when it broke almost immediately, they refused to warranty their work, so we repaired the PEM at no charge for the Texas owner as well. Medlock and Sons are not the bad guys here. I just give it to you straight no fluff no marshmallows no polish, just straight up. Cheers from us.
